Funeral Liturgy for Laura Lee Geraghty, 1/17/04

Our Lady of Victory Chapel
Scripture Reflection

Andrea J. Lee, IHM
President of the College of St. Catherine


The souls of the just are in the hand of God.
God’s care is with his chosen ones.
Although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is renewed day by day.
Your sister will rise. Do you believe this?
Yes. Lord, I have come to believe.
Today we gather in a lovely ballet of grief and celebration that joins hard reality with sweet memory, warms the cold stone of these walls and pulls us close within their comforting embrace as we celebrate the life and resurrection of our sister, Laura Lee.

A terrible beauty rests all around us. A life — graceful, lovely, engaged, fully lived — extinguished. It is too hard, too soon, too painful; and our grief leaves a residue of fear that there is nothing more. Our faith, however, tells us otherwise; indeed, the witness of Laura Lee’s own life tells us so.

She was and is a woman of stunning beauty — finely chiseled features, fabulous style, radiant smile, eyes that flash and pull you instantly into the warm circle of her love and friendship. But, beautiful as well, in terms of purpose and resolve; gracious deflection of attention to others and for others; wonderful capacity to enable and encourage; motivate and include. I cannot think of anyone who better embodies what we hope for in St. Catherine graduates. A beautiful woman indeed.

If beauty was the persuasive comment of Laura Lee’s soul, then we must be reassured that it remains so. If her beauty sometimes startled our senses, it can awaken us still. This woman has indeed left a legacy of luminous and lasting beauty.

As we marvel at her life, we hold reverently the deep places of her soul that Laura Lee unwittingly revealed through the very things she loved: adventure, friends and family and children; engagement and purpose; diversity and new experience, vitality and effort extended to those who needed it most. These were her delights, her treasures. It is so hard to let go of one who embraced beauty and goodness so fully, who understood it as the clearest reflection of what transcends. That is why our grief is so unrelenting. It is also why our hope must prevail.

In her book On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry explores the perennial search for spiritual meaning within beauty. She has two ideas about beauty and both reveal something about Laura Lee. One exalts, “the surfeit of aliveness,” the moving away from self toward others with purpose and contagious energy. Here, “Beauty quickens. It adrenalizes. It makes the heart beat faster.” It makes life more vivid, animated and worth living. We who knew her saw this beauty revealed in Laura Lee again and again.

Scarry’s other idea is about the connection between beauty and moral insight. She says beauty “ignites one’s desire for truth and is deeply connected to symmetry, to fairness and to justice itself.” This deeper expression sounds the resonant chords of Laura Lee’s professional and volunteer life. “This kind of beauty,” Scarry says, “is like seeing angels.” “They are not exactly the thereafter,” she says, “but they bring strong messages about it,” and messages about how we are to mimic beauty here on earth. It is clear that God both created and cares about beauty; indeed being open to beauty is a deeply holy experience and being beautiful through our lives, through our relationships and through our work, shapes the sacred art of everyday life in which God is most clearly present.

Scarry says, “This beauty transcends the quotidian world, signals the surfeit of aliveness in the face of death, the validating flicker from the mind to the body, that perhaps,” like Laura Lee, “we see God looking back.”

This kind of beauty, wonderfully reflected by Laura Lee, is redemptive. A life like hers makes exquisite sense, gives us so much reason to celebrate. Here, the moment before you die is not a single instant in which your whole life passes before you — it is a moment that goes on and on. Within this infinity now stands this beautiful woman, Laura Lee Geraghty. We see so much beauty in her — tears rush to grant it escape and it is true, isn’t it, that suddenly there is rain and lovely conversation everywhere?

Even though we are sad because Laura Lee has left a terrible and unfillable void, we can grant her wish and celebrate joyfully today. Her beauty is not fleeting after all. It does not die, but endures and begs to be embraced and shared. Laura Lee’s beauty will reveal itself to us again and again, and in it we will discover its deeper connections “to symmetry, to fairness and to justice itself.”

The soul of this beautiful woman is in the hands of God.
So, do not let your hearts be troubled. A great grace has been visited upon Laura Lee. Over the past weeks, with my own eyes I saw her accept grace and then put it on and wear it like a lovely dress.

With my own eyes, I saw her begin to enter a place we cannot see, and to do so with her customary graciousness.

Speaking with her in my office just before Thanksgiving, I had a clear sense that Laura Lee had received the grace of moving toward her death with style and graciousness and that she knew she had. Those of us privileged to walk along part of that path with Laura Lee witnessed her move in lovely response to the persistent demands and urgings of God. Past the kind of worry that the passage itself would be so difficult to endure that its messages would be drowned out by the din of pain. Past the self-doubt that plagues us all: “Have I made a difference? Do my contributions matter? What about those I love?” Past worry about work left undone and plans unrealized; past conversations with friends and colleagues and family in the “seen world” to silent conversations with those in the unseen world; and finally to the exquisite leave-taking of her beloved Dick and Jenny; of Kathleen, Kevin and Dennis; of her mother, Leona, and of her close friends, Mary Kay and Mary and Grace, and so many others.

In the middle of these hard weeks and days, I am quite confident stood God, coming from nowhere discernible, as when Jesus visited the disciples in the closed room. Jesus’ message was simple, direct, consoling:

“Peace be with you.” Laura Lee heard that message. I know she did.

That is how it was as Laura Lee passed through the thin veil of which the Celtic people speak. Finally, when the sound of her breathing stopped punctuating the silence, she heard a calming voice, “It’s all right…Don’t worry, it’s just me.” A glimmer of recognition then, as with Thomas, an invitation to touch so as to know for sure, a moment of intimacy so sacred no other could enter.

As Laura Lee’s own labored breathing ceased and the warm breath of God took up its rhythm, this good and beautiful woman was known in the twinkling of an eye, bathed in forgiveness and love, embraced warmly, welcomed home.

And so our wife and mother, sister, daughter, aunt, friend and colleague, our inspiration, our radiant light of purpose and accomplishment is in the hands of God. Indeed she is.

So we must look not toward what is seen but to what is unseen. And we must believe that within the fertile loam of good works within our community, with each new idea explored; problem tackled; adventure embarked upon; grandchild born; act of kindness and courage practiced; gift of time and energy and competence lavished on the needs of the community’s people, Laura Lee will smile that radiant smile of encouragement for our work and living and loving that lies ahead.

The souls of the just are in the hand of God.
God’s care is with his chosen ones.
Although her outer self has wasted away, Laura Lee’s inner self has been gloriously renewed.
Your sister has risen into God’s hands. Do you believe this?
Yes. We have come to believe.